Saturday, June 13, 2015

The Vermont senator says he can beat Hillary Clinton in the Granite State.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders boldly predicted Saturday that he would beat Democratic presidential rival and heavy favorite Hillary Clinton in the 2016 New Hampshire primary, expected to be in early February.

Sanders, 73, has drawn large crowds as he campaigns across Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, meanwhile, has continued her low-key "listening tour" ahead of a June 13 campaign event at New York's Roosevelt Island that is expected to kick off a more outgoing phase of her quest for the White House.

A Bloomberg Politics/Saint Anselm poll in May found Clinton leading Sanders in New Hampshire by a margin of 62-18 percent, but Sanders' support has grown as he continues to deliver a populist message on the campaign trail.

“In my view, the issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time,” Sanders said Saturday.

While Sanders didn't mention Clinton by name in his stump speech, he was asked by a reporter afterwards whether the former secretary of state's lack of a concrete position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential trade deal involving the U.S. and much of the Pacific Rim, was hurting her campaign. On Sanders' Senate website he calls the TPP "disastrous."